Exploring Creativity

There used to be a time when we thought creativity referred to authors, poets and maybe artists. Somehow, we always associated “Creativity” with writing and words.

Until a fantastic English teacher in the 6th grade gave us a whole new perspective on the meaning and implications of “Creativity”. He said that each one of us is creative and it applied to every aspect of our lives.

In short…

If we have the ability to come up with an idea, we are creative!

If we can think, we’re creative!

Some examples for creativity at work that he gave were:

• The essays we wrote
• School projects
• Our excuses for not finishing homework/coming late to school/forgetting something
• The way we dealt with our friends, taking care to make them feel good when they felt low or striving to say the right thing even though we know they’re wrong
• Our dexterity in talking ourselves out of sticky situations
• Explaining away lousy grades

Amid much laughter, he asked us to come with our own examples. It got us thinking…and…we had such a lot of fun expressing all sorts of bizarre things. Oh yes, at the end of a very enjoyable class, he assigned us homework – and it was related to the topic “Creativity”.

This is one of the teachers who inspired me to change my perspective on several things, since. I now see creativity on a daily basis and there is no greater example than within the family.

• Dishing up a delicious meal when there are barely any vegetables at home
• Stretching the family budget so nobody goes without essentials
• Saving money secretly – you know what they say about little drops forming the mighty ocean!
• Ensuring that the whole family goes to bed with a full stomach during the last days of the month when cash is low
• Consoling someone, giving them hope with the right words when things do not go well

I’ve done all of the above and am sure you do, too!.

Creativity also plays a major role in our career. Some examples are:

• While attending interviews, stating why I was suitable for the job and why I wanted it
• As a salesperson, finding the right ways to convince the prospect to become a buyer
• As a trainer while facilitating, motivating change in people
• As a freelancer – writing, editing and blogging and juggling deadlines

Why, as a Mom, I often think my creativity is at its best. When visitors brought my son gifts, I would cleverly hide them so that I could release them at the appropriate time – I still do it! It takes creativity to answer all those bizarre “whys”, cajole kids to go to school when they don’t want to, make them eat their veggies, instinctively knowing the right things to say while giving advice and… much more!

As someone born during times when computers were unheard of, our creative expressions spanned:

• drawing/sketching/painting
• reading
• writing
• craft, sewing and DIY
• singing
• cooking
• playing together with friends
• staging drama (thanks to the training we now do a different kind of drama pretty much like the daily soap!)
• travel

I still enjoy these activities!

As bloggers, I believe that the very fact that we had the courage to put our words out there for anyone willing to read them is pure creativity. We get inspired by what others write, and when we read an outstanding post, it triggers our own thoughts and opinions that we feel inclined to share on our own blogs. We participate in campaigns and contests with our own take on the topics and prompts.

If that’s not creativity hard at work, I would love to know what is!

If you think you are not creative, don’t believe yourself. Believe IN yourself!

♥

For today’s post, I simply set the timer to 10 minutes and enjoyed some free writing!